Normally when I see the Troma skyline come across the beginning of the movie I generally just skip it. They’re not really things I like, such as my indifference to soccer or hockey, life will go on without them. I guess this popped up because of that Fanatic movie I watched with sweaty Joe Spinell in it that I also didn’t particularly like too much but anything had to better than Death Game so why not right? Whyyyyyyyyyyy not. Well big spoiler it was but the bar was set pretty low, kind of like my use of sentence structure but I suppose it was reasonable enough, if you like consistent and oppressive smoke from smoke machines and coffins that float downstairs for no reason and smash you, then you’ll probably like this I think. I thought it was all right and honestly one of the better Troma things but my exposure is pretty low. Aside from the – uh – date I was on that night that chick and I made it during Toxic Avenger I don’t really have good memories of these things but who can forget the first time that ever happened *ahem ahem* *sweat sweat* *side eyes*. So Frightmares or is it Frightmare I already forget because I’m think about something else woah momma hey!

Whatever it’s called, I don’t think the acting is super pleasing but it’s better than, say, drunkenly passing out with a lit cigarette in your fingers and burning the shit out of yourself. I also feel like they might have spent most of their budget on whatever it takes to run a smoke machine ad infinitum. Also – was the guy dead? Alive? Sleeping? Returned from beyond the grave? Just pissed? I don’t think he was horny really I mean that one lady eating the frozen popsicle was really good looking but then she sat the half eaten thing on the tv and left it there to just melt and make everything sticky and attract flies so that doesn’t work for me but I don’t know about him. I guess let’s just look into what happens in this thing and see if we can suss out what’s really going on aside from just some of that “whacky 80’s shit”.

This guy – above – he is very Christopher Lee-ish which always reminds me of Howling 2 – he’s a very dramatic diva of an actor who has his ways and likes carnations and sleeps in a coffin and wears capes and someone always has one thousand candles lit everywhere he goes and one day he kills his manager and then dies. All of that in the opening sentence of this paragraph reminds me of this guy I used to hang around with back in the 90s named Fletcher. Anyway after he’s dead he has an elaborate funeral complete with a giant mausoleum with ever burning candles and neon lights and video tapes of him speaking from beyond the grave and one night these punk teens decide to break into his giant tomb and steal his body and for the life of me I can’t really remember why other than ‘that’s the fucking plot, son’.

Again, I don’t remember why but these youths break into his tomb and stuff his body, coffin and all, into their hearse which ok and drive him back to their house where they mildly defile his corpse kind of weekend at Bernie’s style and then shove him and his coffin up in the attic. “Woooga boooga booooga” they say, standing behind him and flapping his dead arms around. “Ooga booga I’m a dead vampire and my arms are rubber bands and I walk like I’m trying to fan a fart oooga wooga!” “Look at me smoking a cigarette,” they mimic him, shoving a lit stick in his dead lips, “I’m French and I smoke like I’m some Frenchman!”. “Attention captain!” they laugh, tattooing anchors around his dead nipples, “I’m the fucking government and I’m going to draft you into Vietnam you poor son of a bitch and you can just go get blown to pieces on the Mekong River for all we care you sorry bastard have you ever seen flies the size of grasshoppers there’s two ends of this stick the one I’m holding and the one that goes in your ass and you get this shit end”.

After putting his corpse and themselves to bed, one couple starts a very timid make out session when something upstairs starts making noise. “Don’t worry sexy baby I’m sure it’s just (someone) and (someone) pounding one out in the attic with that dead body nearby come on take off your top sweet honey” says the tough guy with the pack of smokes rolled up in his shirt sleeve. “Look studly you’re not going to pound one out down here until you make sure that dead guy’s not coming back to life to kill us for desecrating his corpse and throwing him in an attic filled with spiders and people who don’t like sarcastic messages about smoking Frenchmen” his topless amour replies so he heads on up those creaky, smoke filled stairs, filled with passion and one of those swollen zingers I made up the other month and gets himself killed deader than shit. Ha ha deader than the shit on the end of that stick I mentioned earlier I crack myself up.

And so it goes. You go looking, you get a floating coffin smashing your head in. You try to run away you get burned alive in your night coat. You do something or other with this and that and you get your head cut off. You fiddle with your – um – fiddly-dee and you have to write a 5000 word essay to present to your congregation on why tastefully spilling your seed is a sin against god. You fiddly-doo your own fiddly-deedle and you’ll burn in hell for all of eternity sinner clean thyself and be not as animal be as man. Thou art unclean.

And such and such &c &c. The guy – the dead guy – is everywhere, hanging out in the interior fog, growling and squeezing his temples. Pulling dead bodies into the dumb waiter or lopping their heads off. Huh? Ok ok. It’s just a movie right right but why did she leave that popsicle just there on the tv like that? I can’t seem to get past that.

I feel like I have to bring up one last thing even though this post is long today. At one point there’s one of those chase scenes through a cemetery where our guy and his wobbly legs are fumbling all around the headstones and he half walks and trips around all over the place while our vampire guy ghost maybe something just kind of looms everywhere pulling on his eyes and making faces. Our guy fumbles in to – I guess – the cremation room and sees this:

For some reason I feel like it’s hard to believe that’s in the script.

CHARACTER STUMBLES INTO MORTUARY. LOOKS AROUND, PANICKED.

INT: A LIFELESS FEMALE BODY IS PRESENT, AS IF SUSPENDED FROM THE CEILING. NUDE AS CORPSES ARE ALTHOUGH COVERED WITH SHEET. PREFERRED TO LINGER ON BUSTY CHEST, GIVING RISE TO THE IMAGINATION. AND LOINS PERHAPS RISE IN LOINS IS OBJECTIVE MOST MOVIES DO NOT FINANCE THEMSELVES. THE CORPSE REMAINS UNNAMED NON SPEAKING. BACKSTORY DETAILING LIFE AS FASHION DESIGNER BY DAY VENGEANCE SEEKER BY NIGHT AVAILABLE ON REQUEST.

INT: A CASKET IS ON THE GROUND, AMID STORAGE SUPPLIES FOR CREMATION PROCESSES

INT CASKET: A DIFFERENT WOMAN, NOT YET EMBALMED AND NOT YET BURNED TO ASHES. BOSOMY DÉCOLLETAGE APPARENT AS ARE ANKLES. WHO IS THIS EARTHLY BEAUTY AND TO WHAT DUD SHE SUCCUMB? A BRUISE ON HER WRUSTS SUGGEST EITHER A TOO TIGHT CORSAGE OR BONDAGE SECURINGS. THIS IS LEFT OPEN ENDED AS ARE THE CURLED AND CROOKED SCARS SURROUNDING HER SHINS AND THE NAME TAG READING “PE”.

CHARACTER CLIMBS INTO COFFIN TO SECURE HIDING PLACE FROM DEAD VAMPIRE GHOST COUNT FELLOW.

CHARACTER IS BURNED ALIVE IN THE CREMATION BURNER THING.

Wait what now? How’s that for some real and true script writing?

And it’s not that that person was just hanging there for one quick second shot, she’s seen there for quite some time and I feel like even in this underwhelming movie, but good for Troma, that was a nice subtle touch.

FiLED UNDER: FLOATING COFFINS AND SMOKE MACHINES AND PSYCHICS AND NEON LIGHTING AND BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP COMPUTER NOISES AND PORKY –> FROM PORKY’S